For the second year in a row, the Canton of Beau Fleuve has hosted spring Coronation – this year, though, the new Royals are from our own Barony!  So we went, of course, because I love Coronations – almost as much as I love Crown Tournaments.

It was a very fun day.  I entered the Kingdom Arts and Sciences Championship – the theme was largesse and entries were to be donated to the Crown for distribution during the reign.  I entered the two award medallions that I had finished recently and the pelican cushion – rather than it languishing in the closet like it has been for the last six years.  At one point during the day it really dawned on me that I would not be taking it home with me.  I really am fine with it, but it was such a labor of love that I would be lying if I said it was easy to part with it.  In addition to the Crown’s choice (which was John Michael Thorpe, who does beautiful meatalwork), they recognized the Laurels’ choice, populace choice, and outgoing champion’s choice.

As it turns out, the middle weekend of April is a pretty good weekend for me to go to an event.  Six years ago, I was apprenticed to Eilis and got my Maunche at Balfar’s Challenge (which was today, too).  Today, I was the outgoing champion’s choice of the folks entered in the A&S championships (prize: a lovely buff-colored kidney pouch).  I received a token as a seamstress to the Crown, and I received my Sycamore.  (For the non-Ae folks, that’s the A0A level A&S award.)  I had suspected that something was up because I’d been getting a lot of weird questions from various folks.  Obviously I didn’t know WHAT they were up to or when anything might be happening, but I was not completely shocked.  What I didn’t expect was that Matatias had written the scroll text!  I love that – each of my Kingdom A&S awards comes from him, since he made my Maunche medallion as well.  Sadly, he had to be at work this afternoon so he couldn’t be there for court, but Irene says that she got good pictures.

Jokes were made that Caleb did a really good job taming the ice dragon this year… though it didn’t last long, as it snowed this morning.

But that’s beside the point.  I really don’t get why this even wipes me out so much, but it does.  We all had a lot of fun; Mistress Mahin came up – it was the first time we’d seen her since she moved to Aethelmearc; some friends came to check out the SCA too, and had a great time.

Both Shoshanna and I entered the A&S competition – she had made an “alphabet board” patterned after ones used to teach the aleph bet to young kids in the Angevin Jewish community.  She wrote and painted all the letters herself (in English rather than Hebrew) – all we did was coach her and I drew the initial lines for her to paint over.  I entered the in-progress mauve gown as well as the award medallions in both needlework and heraldic display.  Shoshanna’s comments were awesome, and she got a number of tokens from various people.  I got really great comments on the heraldic display entries and really supportive comments on the embroidery.  It’s hard to say much about the in-progress dress (or the comments on it) because it is so very in progress.

All in all, a good time was had by all, I think.

There’s simply no way I will have all my entries done by then.  Modern life, both professional and home-ownery, has interceded PLUS I have volunteered to do some time-sensitive sewing for other people.

Just so I don’t get yelled at, I will probably show the mauve gown as an “in progress” piece and maybe the cyclas that I made for Shoshanna in costuming.  I’ll finish off the award medallions to show in embroidery, heraldic display, and fiber arts.  There is no way I’ll have the braies paper done in time for the February deadline and that’s kind of the linchpin of the whole thing.  So NEXT YEAR I swear… I’ll have the mauve gown done, the braies paper done, as well as some EVEN BETTER (opus anglicanum?) award medallions.